WNBA: Without Angel Reese, the Sky suffered their worst loss

There’s no question the Chicago Sky had their work cut out for them against the Seattle Storm.

That was obvious even before tip-off. They were without Michaela Onyenwere (knee), Ariel Atkins (leg) and, most importantly, Angel Reese (back). As a result, they didn’t have a solid core used to playing consistent minutes together at the outset, especially with Atkins and Reese out of the starting rotation.

Even though the Sky managed to stay close in the first half, trailing 39-26 while only scoring eight points in the second quarter, it was the cursed third quarter that sealed their fate. The Storm, led by Skylar Diggins, Nneka Ogwumike, Erica Wheeler, Gabby Williams and Dominque Malonga, went on a tear and managed to outscore the Sky 31-17, putting the game out of reach.

Everything culminated the Sky losing 95-57, with the 38-point deficit making it Chicago’s most lopsided loss of the season. In addition, the Sky, with a 7-17 record, are off to their worst 24-game start since 2006, the franchise’s first season.

To put it simply, Chicago was caught in the eye of the Storm on Thursday. The issues that have continued to hurt the Sky (turnovers, points off turnovers, poor shooting) all came together calamitously. The Sky turned the ball over 20 times, whereas the Storm only had 11. Seattle then capitalized on those turnovers, scoring 26 points compared to the Sky’s eight. The Sky also struggled in the transition game, losing by a margin of 17-4. One of their strongest areas, points in the paint, went the other way as Kamilla Cardoso and Elizabeth Williams came up short agains Ogwumike and Malonga, with the Storm outscoring the Sky in points in the paint 28-14.

In terms of shooting percentage, Chicago finished at 33.9 percent from the field compared to the Storm’s 53.6 percent. Seattle dominated from beyond the arc at 45 percent, while the Sky were a meager 19 percent. Also, every Storm player finished the game with a positive plus/minus. Every Sky player, unsurprisingly, was in the negative.

Rachel Banham, who finished with 13 points, described the game as “gross basketball,” saying:

It’s just gross basketball. There’s no other way to really describe it. It’s just not, it’s just not it. And we know that. And we need to just like be about it. You see, it needs to stop being something we keep talking about and just be about that life, really.

The one bright spot came from Cardoso. She finished with a double-double of 13 points and 13 rebounds. Cardoso also led the team in shooting percentage at 62.5 percent. Despite collective inconsistency, Cardoso was that consistent presence in scoring and on the boards. As head coach Tyler Marsh said after the game:

I think that Kamilla’s still trying to find that consistency as well from day to day. But yeah, I think that, more often than not, she has shown that. I think that we’ve tried to find different ways to get her the ball tonight. We missed her on a couple of times where she had deep seal opportunities in there, but I thought that she came out and she ran the floor hard. Today, she tried to establish herself. We just weren’t able to get it to her in a timely manner before they were able to bring help and multiple bodies to her. So we got to do a better job of that. But yeah, I think that you know, we need consistent play from across the board, and Mill’s been trying to give us that, just like everyone else has.

Another slight positive was the extended minutes the Sky were able to give to young bench players Hailey Van Lith (23:55), Maddy Westbeld (24:35) and Marquesha Davis (13:08), who made her Chicago debut after signing a seven-day hardship contract.